Anger Management: A serious problem for adults, teens, and children.

Emotion is a natural part of life. They are our bodies way of letting us know that we are still alive, that we are capable of feeling, and they let us know when our internal self has gone a-rye. Throughout life we all experiences issues that create a gambit of emotions, but for some reason the one we tend to struggle with the most is anger and that can be said both with adults and adolescents. Anger is something that makes us feel helpless and out of control in turn forcing us to struggle with containing it, expressing it, and coping with it. Anger is something that occurs when we perceive that our person is being attacked, whether it is physically or verbally.  The fact is, perception is reality and when people have the perception they are being  attacked or mistreated in a situation can lead to anger building. As human beings, when we feel we have been wronged, those feelings can sometimes cloud our judgment, cause us to say things we might not normally, and/or completely override our total sense of logic.

Anger not only will create psychological changes, but we can also feel changes in our physical person and again, the changes are the same for an adult or adolescent. Your heart rate increases, your blood pressure goes up, and adrenaline races. Some people start to feel sick to their stomach, their head starts to hurt, and some start to feel tension all over their body. A person’s Inability to control their anger can lead to things like road rage, divorce, child abuse, violence in the workplace, and of course domestic violence and anger that is left uncontrolled for years can create chronic/long term health problems such as headaches, issues sleeping, high blood pressure. Some do make the choice to contain or hide their anger and not just once, but for long periods of time. This is just as unhealthy and unproductive. Emotions were meant to be expressed and that includes anger.

Anger management may not be something that people find to be beneficial or productive, but what’s the alternative? What benefits or rewards do we receive when we allow ourselves to become volatile, confrontational, irrational messes? More often than not, we find more consequences.  So how can you tell that you, your teenager, or someone you know might be struggling with their anger? Please take the list of questions below and apply them to yourself, your teen, and/or someone else in your life that you may have in mind: 

• Do you get into many physical fights?
• Do you engage in heated arguing, often with no resolution?
• Are you incapable of getting  over a past situation or occurrence?
• Are you always in a bad mood more often than not?
• Has your anger ever made you want to seek revenge on a person?
• Have you ever wanted to harm yourself or someone else?

If you answered yes more than no, chances are pretty high that some type of anger management is needed. So the next logical step is to begin learning and applying some basic anger management techniques. Below is a list of tips that can be utilized and can also be applied to adults and teenagers:

• If you are a person who needs to de-escalate through an aggressive activity you need to have access to your own personal space that will allow for things such as screaming, working out, hitting a punching bag, etc. Your personal space can simply be any area that is conducive to however you best vent your aggression without further agitating the situation.
• When you find yourself angry beyond the point of being reasonable, we tend to do things that are not beneficial to you, the person you are angry with, or the problem itself. When this happens, remove yourself from the situation all together. Go for a walk, read, take some quiet time, then you can come back with a clear, calm head.
• Examine how you spend most of your day. If you are someone who spends most your time indoors, maybe you need some time outside each day. If you experience a lot of noise during the day, then allow yourself some quiet, relaxing personal time.
• Never underestimate the power of deep breathing and/or counting to ten.
• Learn to accept that you cannot change everything regardless of what emotion you throw at it. Some things, some people, some situations just are what they are. Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it so while we cannot change others we can change our reaction to them.
• We have to take better care of ourselves and spend more time working towards overall balance in life. There has to be time each day allotted for only us and our self-preservation. Also try to leave your work/school problems at work/school. Don’t make others pay for a situation someone else has created.
• The most valuable tool any person has is self-control. No one can control us but us and we cannot hold others accountability for the actions we choose or the words we say. Self-control can also keep you from saying or doing something extremely harmful that an apology might not fix later on.

While it is true, anger management tips can help us avoid reaching total eruption, the ultimate goal is to avoid complete escalation all together.  Everyone has certain triggers that will cause them to become agitated (things that are said or actions that are taken that will automatically enrage them). The key is to identify your triggers so you can avoid them or change your environment so they can be avoided. You can also communicate with those around you, like a spouse,  and educate them about your triggers so they can also help to avoid “trigger” moments. However, if you are unable to completely avoid them, then as stated previously, anger management skills can help you control yourself  and the situation when and/if a trigger does arise.  It must also be noted that if you are someone who feels you stay angry all the time and your inability to manage your anger is affecting your relationships, your job, and/or your health, then clearly larger steps need to be taken to bring peace to your life as well as those around you. These steps can include finding a counselor/therapist to help you work through what could be causing your anger and/or finding some type of a support group.

Anger management not only needs to be a priority in our teens, but also in raising our younger children. Behavioral issues resulting from lack of anger control that occur during childhood, should be clear omens to parents and caregivers of problems to come in adolescence/adulthood. Such problems could include partner violence, severe/extremely harsh punishments for their own children (punishments that could border on or directly be abuse), difficulties at work/school in regards to their interactions with others, and difficulties maintaining friendships. The most effective strategy a parent has for controlling anger in their children is being a good role model. Parents need to be familiar with and utilize anger management  techniques themselves so they can teach their children to cope with daily stress/anger. We ultimately want to teach our children to respond instead of react. It also best to implement these skills is prior to adolescents.  The older a person gets, the more concrete their learning/thinking patterns become which obviously makes changing those patterns more difficult, but if the anger management foundation is already laid, it is something that will help through adulthood.

As parents we think nothing of teaching our children responsibility, kindness, and compassion so teaching them about feeling/expression their emotions should be a priority too. Children need to understand that feeling angry is perfectly okay, but it has to be expressed in a constructive/productive manner. When children are able to better manage their anger, it not only increases their overall self-control, but also helps to increase their self-respect which will help others gain respect for them in return. The really great part is that anger management for children is really the same as it is for teens and adults.

When dealing with the anger displayed by younger children, try using these anger management tips:

• The first thing is to try to help them calm down and refocus. Have them take a deep breath and count to ten. If you feel they are still angry, have them count further or count backwards from ten to one.
• Teach them alternatives to anger. For example, if someone at school is bothering them, teach them to avoid them or get help from an adult. Teach them that in life we deal with all sorts of people we will not get along with.
• If your child cannot put their anger into words, have them draw you a picture. Have them let you know what anger looks like for them. That way in the future when they are feeling angry, they can again draw it, you will recognize it, and can then address it.
• If your child needs to work off their anger, buy them a punching doll or bag. Let them go for a walk or ride a bike. There is one caution to parents though, NEVER SEND AN ANGRY CHILD OUT ALONE! If your child cannot correctly manage their anger, sending them out unsupervised to deal with the unpredictability of the world would not be in your best interest or theirs.
• When your child does manage their anger well, make sure you take notice and reward them.

It's also important to remember in your attempts at positive anger management role modeling, that your child knows even you are susceptible to anger and at times, even you have to exercise the same tools. Children need to see even their parents get angry at times. Don’t try to hide your anger from your children, it will actually do more harm than good.